


how is your beautiful daughter?

by firelordazulas



Category: Assassin's Creed (2016) - Fandom, Assassin's Creed - All Media Types
Genre: F/F, like So Much happens somehow, okay theres also a side of ellen/juno in this dont even ask i dont know, this ended up So Much
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-19
Updated: 2017-06-19
Packaged: 2018-11-16 01:01:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,187
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11243022
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/firelordazulas/pseuds/firelordazulas
Summary: You met the ghost figures eyes - they were yours. It was your own face staring back at you, hand outstretched, the Apple almost offered. Your fingers go to reach, and she swirls into mist - as Aguilar watches her secret the Apple within her cloak so do you. As Cal watches her leap from his vision, so do you - and so does Ellen Kaye, whose eyes bore holes into the back of your neck.





	how is your beautiful daughter?

**Author's Note:**

  * For [elainebarrish](https://archiveofourown.org/users/elainebarrish/gifts).



> idk why they gave charlotte rampling such scary lesbian villain vibes but i Loved it and anyway this fic was born from that and also my major love 4 the ezio trilogy - thats why theres such an intense focus on juno bc i never got over the entire concept of the first civilisation rip 
> 
> also i made pinterest boards 4 sophia and ellen bc thats apparently who i am now  
> sophia: https://uk.pinterest.com/queerjadis/sophia-rikkin/  
> ellen: https://uk.pinterest.com/queerjadis/ellen-kaye/ 
> 
> this marks the end of my gay 4 marion cotillard ficathon that only included like 2 fics but still took me more than 2 months 2 complete

You met the ghost figures eyes - they were yours. It was your own face staring back at you, hand outstretched, the Apple almost offered. Your fingers go to reach, and she swirls into mist - as Aguilar watches her secret the Apple within her cloak so do you. As Cal watches her leap from his vision, so do you - and so does Ellen Kaye, whose eyes bore holes into the back of your neck. 

Ellen Kaye is almost a storybook villain. She hovers, slightly intangible at the edges of your days. Her posture is always ramrod straight, and always cloaked in an impeccable suit. She sighs, checks her watch, shifts on her feet at the edge of your workspace. You know she watches you enter the animus. She watches you leave even more - watches you track your ancestors memories to find a final hiding place, watches as a board of displaced memories becomes busier and busier. She doesn’t get to see the physical changes; doesn’t get to see the muscle that builds on your legs and arms, the skills you know you’re developing. She doesn’t know about the visions, about the loss of self. Ellen Kaye watches and she thinks she sees everything. Her gaze barely scratches the surface.

 

Until she finds you, late at night, in the gym that’s technically reserved for the subjects (although technically you are a subject, are in some strange in-between stage of studied and studier.) Fighting a dummy isn’t the same as the slap of flesh to flesh, of the feel of bones cracking - you’d always been a scientist but never a physical presence, beyond the construction of a sharp haircut and dark lipstick. You were someone who didn’t fight the bad guys yourself - those men were dealt with, behind the scenes, by people who handled the messy side of your organisation. Now, with the memories of your ancestor worming their way through your brain, with her skills locking themselves into place within the very bones of you, from the balls of your feet to the very way you grip your pen, you find you have this energy, this potential for violence that needs to escape.

To put it bluntly, you find yourself needing to hit things. 

You don’t notice Ellen Kaye standing in the doorway until you’re in the middle of doing this fancy jumping side kick that always feels particularly satisfying on the landing - and land it you do, sending the head of the dummy spinning off towards the doorway. Your feet hit the floor with an exhilarated laugh; this isn’t the first dummy you’ve broken, but the feeling doesn’t ever really get old. As you go to chase the dummy head, you finally notice the suited figure in the doorway. The light is bright behind Ellen; you can’t see anything of her features. 

“Chancellor, I - I didn’t see you there -”

“Yes, that much was quite obvious. What are you doing?”

“It’s the bleeding effect. I’m developing the skills of my ancestor, as predicted.”

“Are you experiencing any hallucinations? Anything I - we - should be worried about?”

“No.” This a lie, of course. “Nothing unusual. I’m keeping a close eye on myself, and my team is very capable - I’m sure they’ll alert you if anything seems amiss.” You’re visibly sweating, and wearing a hairband, and your usual armour of dark lipstick and sharp tailoring are more than a little bit far away, but strangely you don’t feel self-conscious. These skills were earned - maybe not by you, maybe not in the conventional way, but the things your body has become capable of are not something you feel you should be ashamed of.  
Instead, you start jogging lightly around the room to cool down, stretching your arms, as is your normal routine. You are not ashamed, but you don’t particularly want to show off either. Finishing the session with such a satisfying dummy beheading is hardly a hardship.  
You don’t look at Ellen, but you feel her leave. 

 

People were often expendable to you. It wasn’t in a mean way, or a pretentious one. You had no malicious intent. Just a driving need to understand the human condition - a driving need to tame it. Your father had imbued that within you from an early age, and now you knew you were better at it than him - you understood the workings of the subconscious better than he ever would. You knew the words to sway a crowd - you knew what people needed to hear, and you knew how to manage them. You could create the perfect, ordered world that the Templars strove for. For the Apple’s location to be located in your ancestor's memories - why, it was just the last part of the perfect puzzle. You’d inherit that power from your mothers mothers mothers mothers, etc, etc, hands, and the Templars would be yours to rule.

These delusions of power were only ever entertained in the dark of your bed at night, when the whispers of her tried to wrench control from you. The ghostly shadow you first saw in Cal’s memories refuses to leave you. The more you learn about her, the deeper she ferrets her way into your subconscious. 

 

You didn't mean for Ellen to see you training, but now you think there might have been some benefit in it. Her gaze lingers on the curve of muscles just hidden, almost out of sight. You don't need her respect, but it is satisfying that she now sees you as a threat. Perhaps it makes you safer. Perhaps it just makes you smug and daring, superior and unaffected by the previously menacing atmosphere of her heavy gaze. You’re not sure what the loaded gaze means but you feel it. She starts coming to watch you within the Animus more, appearing before you’ve been strapped in and disappearing as you are lowered back to the floor. You focus on her as the metal lifts you from the floor. Her eyes are a watery blue, deep within the shadows of her face, but it comes to you then that you think she’s beautiful. The machine lifts you up and away, the memories of the past swallowing you.

 

It takes two weeks of searching for Ellen to finally reveal why she’s been present so often.

“Miss Rikkin, if I could have a word?”

You’ve just been pulled away from the metal claw of the animus after a particularly frustrating session of nothing useful. In your more romantic moments, you think your ancestor is hiding the Apple from you on purpose. “Of course, your Excellency. Is something wrong?”

“No, no. Well, nothing you need to know about. I have a slight… Favour to ask.”

“Would you like to go to my office?”

Ellen follows you silently, no sound but the slap of your bare feet on the stone floors and the click of her heels. She follows just behind you, as if she doesn’t know where your office is. She must really need this favour. Or, she needs you to think she really needs it - this is probably a test after all. You wonder if they’ll try a little branding, assassin style, or if the Templar initiation is more sophisticated than that. 

You settle behind your desk and invite her to sit opposite you. “So. What can I help you with?”

“Before we begin, just to clarify, the bleeding effect is permanent, yes? You have permanently gained the skills of your ancestor?”

“As far as we know, yes. The programme hasn’t been running long enough to know if the subjects lose their abilities.”

“Well, I’ve seen what you’re capable of, and I think I have a job for you. It’s not mandatory; you don’t have to do it. But it would show a great faith in the Order if you were to help with this.”

“But - my work - without the Apple -”

“What if I was to promise additional funding for your little project?”

“Well...” She’s got you, you both know she’s got you. The programme has been close to being shut down for months. You can’t turn down any opportunity. “What would this job entail? What would I be expected to do?”

“You’ll be given the details when you need them, but suffice to say you’ll be using all those skills your ancestor has taught you.”

“So I’ll be, what, murdering people? You want me to assassinate someone?” You scoffed, pushing back from the desk. “I’m a scientist! What makes you think I’ll be able to -”

“You’ve got the skill set, I’ve seen it. I believe you’re right for the job.”

She plays you like a fiddle. Those pale eyes that usually appear almost reptilian crinkle at the corners, inject some kind of sincere warmth into Ellen’s gaze, and you’re sunk. 

“If I die, you’ll never find the Apple.”

“There will be more Apples, just as there will be more scientists.”

 

A week later you’re ushered out the facility. A helicopter had picked you up, and the inside of the cabin had blacked out windows; they hadn’t allowed you to know where the base was. At some point during the journey, you realised this was serious, that you were being taken to the main Templar stronghold, that whatever mission you were being sent on mattered. You’d realised that you could die.

 

A plane ride later and you’re within the London headquarters, the ones your father had spoken of but never let you see. You haven’t told him about this trip, or your skills; all he knows is that your heritage is useful but not something the two of you should be exactly proud of. There is a certain meshing, a blurring of lines within the history of the Order and of the Assassins that none of them like to admit to - there have been children born on both sides, to both sides, defectors and traitors. None of you are purely anything and maybe that's the biggest lie you all perpetuate, that these two warring factions have always been enemies, that the line has always been firmly drawn.

You stare up at the ancient architecture and realise this is something you have missed about England. In the States, nothing has any history; you are lucky to see a building older than 100 years. Here in the UK, London especially, ancient buildings are something you can’t escape. This is what made you want to decode humanity in the first place, what made you want to protect and serve, this sense of a beautiful history, of ancestors that lived to give their children a small forever. You trail a hand over the rough edges of the brickwork/ A wall imperfect. Beauty with a function.

Looking back, you think that’s when you resolved your heart and hands to kill.

 

Ellen Kaye waits for you within a reinforced armoury. She stands among the body armour and guns and looks entirely at home, as if she’s been sending her agents off to possibly die for years - you realise that she probably has. She’s the villain of this story, after all. You believe in the Templars, believe in their message and their doctrine, but Ellen Kaye’s attitude doesn’t quite allow for the suspension of the belief. She’s a little too much like the dictator or overload, a little too self-important to be trusted. You don’t trust her, and you don’t trust the Templars, but you do trust their philosophy. You trust that order and authority will provide. 

“You know that I don’t know how to use any of this?” You brush a hand over a particularly vicious looking assault rifle while Ellen watches. 

“I know. We have an old assassin’s uniform for you.”

“How convenient.” You want to help, you do, but something about Ellen always makes you bold, always make you a touch too sarcastic and bolshy. “Do I want to know how you ‘acquired’ it?”

“Probably not.”

“So, are you going to tell me what this job is?”

“I thought we’d let you try the equipment on first.” She gestures you into a side room imperiously. 

It’s an old assassin’s robe, from maybe the 19th century. It’s clearly cut for a women, designed to be tight to the skin but easy to move in. Only the jacket is authentic; the boots, trousers, and turtleneck are obviously modern. You finger the red silk lining thoughtfully. Two gauntlets lie on a cushion, both equipped with a hidden blade. It is strangely comforting to slide them on, like the reassuring warmth of coming home after a long trip, or of a pen that fits your hand exactly. 

There is no mirror in the room. Even without it, you know your gait has dropped into an arrogant, liquid roll; your body flows with the confidence of someone who knows they can kill. The hooded jacket feels beyond at home upon your shoulders. You know this isn’t exactly what your ancestor wore, but the soft leather is perhaps better in many ways; it will protect you better from a bullet, anyway. The bulletproof vest you wear underneath helps.  
Ellen is waiting for you. You leave the jacket undone, the hood down; you don’t want to trigger some kind of natural reaction to seeing an assassin and end up getting shot or something.

Ellen’s smile is a sardonic twist of her lips. “It looks good. How’s the fit?”

“Suspiciously perfect. Will you tell me what my mission is now?”

“You are to infiltrate a vault and retrieve a parcel for the Order.“

Patiently, you wait for Ellen to say more, but she doesn’t. “Is that… It?”

“Yes. Should be simple for your assassin skills.”

“So, what, you’ll drop me outside the target and just expect me to acquire whatever it is I’m meant to be acquiring? Are you even going to tell me what it is?”

“That information is need to know, and you don’t need to know. There will be a team with you who will tell you the rest of the essentials.” Ellen seemed to be enjoying leaving you in the dark. “However, there is something you need to know. There’s someone on your team that has been behaving… Erratically. You need to assess whether we can trust them, or if you suspect that they’re working for another agency.”

“So really I’m going as your spy?”

Her voice is careful, diplomatic and slow in her response. “You could choose to view it like that.”

“Do you know who they’re working for?”

“We have a suspicion.”

“Oh, right, of course, you are not going to tell me.”

“You can’t implicate yourself if you don’t know about it.”

You laugh, bitterly. “Do I get a gun?”

“If you want one, of course. There’s a fully stocked armoury in the next room.” Ellen is smooth and placid as a lake. She remains completely unmoved by the talk of violence, with her proximity to the dead and the dying. 

There are holsters on the wall. You consider the options, contemplate yourself with a gun. You think of the respect, the sense of being that comes with killing someone with your bare hands, versus the distance of a long shot. You decide against a ranged weapon. 

“Can you tell me anything else?” You ask.

“You will be fully briefed at the same time as your team.” She looks down and to the side, as if considering, her hands linked behind her back. “Stay alert. It would be a shame to lose the Apple.”

Those blue eyes meet yours, the ones you had at first discounted as watery seeming as deep as an ocean, as complex as a sky. “Of course.”

She leads you away. 

 

You secure the Shroud, you kill the bad guys, you kill the traitor. The Templars reign victorious - you got back to your study without a word. Yours is not the work to be celebrated. Yours happens behind closed doors, will remain hidden from all but Ellen Kaye. 

Time spins on. You manage to probe farther into your ancestor's memories; your ancestor gets her hooks more firmly into you. Ellen Kaye continues to hover, the ambiguity of her presence never quite resolved.

You have made yourself into an asset. You acknowledge to yourself that perhaps becoming useful was a mistake. The skill set you have displayed, the unfaltering loyalty to Ellen has attracted more attention than is perhaps safe. You know she will keep you close now, in case she has a need of your skills again. 

The freedom you thought you would be offered with the increase in funding does not happen. You project is better funded, but it is also better surveilled. Ellen seems to spend more time watching you within the Animus than she does anything else, for every time the artificial arm places you down on the floor you see the tail end of her coat whip around the doorway.

Until the day you find it.

 

Your ancestor nearly dies hiding the Apple. So do you. The arm of the Animus rises and rises and rises - you don’t know they think it will end in a crash. You don’t know. Until you start to fall.

You find where the Apple is hidden. You also break the Animus and an arm. The last thing you remember is Ellen Kaye, of all people, running towards you, yelling for a doctor - you remember her pulling your head into her lap. You remember her running desperate fingers through your hair, as if the small amount of comfort would save you.

She doesn’t come to see you while you’re in the medical bay. You’re not surprised - you think you dreamt it, dreamt of an Ellen Kaye who knew you, who had attached any sort of significance to your life within hers. 

A group of agents secure the Apple. You don’t even try to be a part of the team; the doctors say it will be at least three months until your arm heals, if not six. Again, your work goes mostly unnoticed - it is your father who reaps the benefits of securing the Apple. You get five months in a cast and an empty science facility for your efforts. You get an assassin rebellion and an assignment to a new role, one that seems like a cushy research post where you will do nothing particularly challenging or interesting. Maybe that’s supposed to be your reward; a well paid holiday away from the challenges of doing what you love. It’s your worst nightmare. Your old research no longer interests you. Your ancestor haunts you through your nights, a cloud of malevolence - you have betrayed her, betrayed the Assassins - she cannot imagine nor begin to understand your motives. The lines between the two of you became fractured and blurred long ago. Now she uses the life your manipulation of her memories has given her to become a wailing fury in the confines of your dreams. You spend your months of isolation in a paranoid trance, wearing tracks in the floor from your pacing.

Ellen Kaye takes a whole 6 months to visit. Your arm is freshly healed, the cast off for months now. You’ve gone back to training - the physical exercise keeps your ghost at bay. She arrives in the evening. She arrives when you are absorbed in some kind of research, some kind of index of your ancestors, that is not particularly strenuous but is at least giving you something to do. 

You don’t mean to breathe, “Your Excellency,” in her direction. You don’t mean to straighten into a soldier’s posture, hands linked behind your back, subconsciously emulating her. 

She’s the first person you’ve seen other than your father in weeks. You’d forgotten the colour of her eyes, her sharp tailoring; and then you realise that’s not true at all. These small details had been the few good dreams you’d had in the last months. She’d been what you’d dreamed of, the blue of her eyes the thing you’d imagined in the dark when you had needed something to send you into a good sleep. You had blushed and stumbled back into your desk with the realisation, posture gone to pieces. She’d raised an eyebrow, said nothing. 

She gives you Juno. You had killed a traitor, proven your trustworthiness - your reward was the being that saved the human race. Your reward was as unfathomable as the stars. Ellen gets you a team and another empty facility that soon becomes full of your work, becomes full of wires and full of Juno herself. 

You are the only person Ellen trusts with Juno. No one else is allowed alone in a room with the deity; Juno is too valuable, too cunning, too charismatic. 

“Juno could convince anyone to her side.” Ellen tells you.

“But not me?”

Ellen’s gaze is long, considering. “No. Not you.”

Ellen Kaye once again becomes a silent shadow. She follows your work, follows you, all through this facility that she herself has funded. You wonder if she has even told the other chancellors about the facility or if that’s how deep the secret of this project goes. You wonder if even your father knows; you have not seen him since being moved here, since being moved underground.

The work is too fascinating for you to wonder for too long.

Juno asks repeatedly for access to the Shroud. You do not trust her, even as she has you spellbound, fascinated. It is obvious there is something in this for her; it is obvious that she is not completely honourable. You can hear her, sometimes, hear her murmur to her ex-husband, hear the hatred she has of your kind. She has been driven mad by her isolation. Mad by her rage.

Juno threatens and begs and tries to bribe her way into a new body. She begs to see a Sage, begs to see anyone but you. She wishes to understand your loyalties, to understand you; you don’t allow her to. 

Until she meets Ellen.

 

They don’t meet as such; it’s more that Juno sees you interact with her. Juno says your body leans towards her as if she were the sun and you were a flower. She claims that she understands you, body and soul now; that she owns you, body and soul. You have lost any mystery for Juno now. She sneers at your research, sneers at your morals and your assessments of her. She proclaims you are nothing better than her now; no better than a fool in love. 

Of course your interactions with Juno are taped. Of course Ellen sees them, sees Juno’s illusions to someone that you’re in love with - you’re just lucky that Juno doesn’t know Ellen’s name yet. 

Predictably, Ellen corners you. “Do I need to doubt where your loyalties lie?”

You bark a bitter laugh. “No. No, you do not.”

“Really? What if Juno gets her hands on whoever this man is; surely you’d do anything she asked in order to protect him?” Ellen’s doing that thing where she advances on you menacingly, the thing that makes you shake your head at the clichéness of it even as it brings heat to your cheeks.

“Seriously, Ellen, it’s really not a problem. If Juno manages to threaten them we’re going to be in a lot more trouble than from just me.” You’d just walked away, leaving Ellen staring after you. 

So what if Ellen knew you were in love with her? You had a very childish crush; it wasn’t important, and you weren’t going to allow either Juno or Ellen herself hold it against you. It was only natural. Ellen was the only vaguely attractive person you ever had contact with - the rest of your team were all younger than you and barely spoke, as if Ellen had already warned them off. Maybe she had. It wouldn’t be all that surprising; there was less opportunity for you to betray the Order if you never had the opportunity to convert others to your cause, to make other people like you. 

With an inevitability that has been creeping up on you, you find Ellen stood in front of Juno. Juno laughs at the sight of you, a mean-spirited cackle. “Oh, Sophia, did you really think I would tell her? While I do find it rather entertaining to cause… Friction between the two of you, I think it is rather better to let her stew in it.”

“This doesn’t mean I owe you.” You say.

“Of course it doesn’t. But it does mean I still have at least one weapon in my arsenal.”

“I’ll leave you both to it, then.” You stride away, only sparing Ellen a single look at the door.

It feels like a strange breach of privacy for Ellen to have gone behind your back to Juno. Maybe the simplest answer was the true one; perhaps you should just tell her, get it over with like ripping off a plaster. But then what reaction do you really expect to get, apart from maybe a sort of smug lack of surprise? There had been no tension filled moments between the two of you, nothing but your grasping for human companionship. Yes, the science is some of the most fascinating you’d ever attempted to understand, and at your core it remains the most important thing to you, but in the end you think you’d maybe follow Ellen Kaye to the end of the world and back. 

“Do you believe in the Order?”

“I believe in its ideals. I believe in its mission.”

“That’s not an answer.”

“I’ve seen the inside of the Order first hand. I know its corruption; I know its weakness. How can you ask me if I believe in it when my father is supposedly a highly trusted member of the organisation when he’s one of the weakest men I’ve ever known?”

“Do you believe in me?”

“Of course.”

Ellen’s raised eyebrow is enough of a response.

“I have killed for you. How is that not enough?”

“Do you not find Juno… Compelling?”

“I think she is fascinating, but also she is obviously mad. How could I ever want to release her on the world when she clearly only has her own agenda? She does not want the best for mankind - she clings to the memory of her dead husband and continues to blame humans as a whole. Juno considers herself superior to humanity; she does not want to help us so much as rule us.” 

“So you don’t think her mission is just? That perhaps humanity deserves her anger? Would we not prosper under her rule?”

“Ellen… You must not allow yourself to be swayed by her arguments. She is only after one thing.”

“What if we were to give her that? What if we gave her the Shroud, to see her power?”

“No, Ellen. We can’t do that. You know we can’t.”

 

Ellen’s obsession with Juno is worrying. You quietly block her access to the Shroud and to Juno herself. You recognise the look in Ellen’s eyes; you know she is in some kind of love, is devoted in some way to the god-like being. There is a danger in that devotion; it leaves the Order vulnerable. It leaves you vulnerable, leaves the warmth in your heart at Juno’s mercy - you know she could take Ellen whenever she liked, rip her from any kind of fantasy of returned feelings. 

Juno taunts you. “I could give you her. I could make her love you, if you only allowed me access to the Shroud.”

“You know this will not work. I wouldn’t want manufactured feelings.”

“Is this really something you can afford to be sanctimonious about?”

“It is the most important thing. Surely you understand this - surely you would never wish for your sweet Aita to falsely love you?”

“I would never have to wish for such a thing! We were soul mates! He was my one true love and you took him from me -” Her voice rises into an electronic screech, the various screens her likeness was projected on flashing and emitting sparks. You quietly turn your back, leave the room; leave her to her raging madness.

 

You sip your whiskey. The security camera for the Shroud plays in front of you; you have taken to watching the feed nightly, like a paranoid part of your nightly routine. Ellen paces, muttering, in front of the door that allows access to the piece of Eden. She has yet to actually attempt access even though she has been down here every night for the past week. Juno has well and truly sunk her claws into Ellen; she has become nothing more than Juno’s tool, an extension of the body that she longs for. 

A glass more of whiskey and you decide it is time to confront her. You have let her stew in her paranoid delusions, but now you need to know how much of a threat to the project she will be. 

She doesn’t hear you walk up to her. “Ellen. What do you think you’re doing?”

She stops, looks wildly about her, eyes crazed. “Sophia. Sophia, Sophia, Sophia.” Ellen’s steps right up to you, into your space. “Sophia, who do you love?”

“You, Ellen. I love you. And you love her. Juno.”

“She’s in my dreams, Sophia. We were married, and we were happy and loved, before the war, before the threat of the solar flare. She’s my soulmate.”

“You’re a Sage.”

“Yes. Yes, I must be. Sophia. You mustn’t allow me access to her or the Shroud. Whatever happens.”

“I already blocked your access to both.”

“Sophia... ” She fell forward, into your arms. “I knew I could trust you. I knew you could be very useful to me.”

“Is that all I am to you, Ellen? Useful to you?”

“It’s all you can be.”

You leave her there. Leave her staring after you.

 

Ellen removes herself from the project. She stops hovering, stops asking you for updates. Your life becomes defined by the hole she leaves behind her. Juno stays angry at Ellen’s betrayal, stays angry at you. You continue your work into unravelling the secrets of the Shroud, of the First Civilisation. The work keeps you busy, keeps you fascinated. It keeps you from thinking too hard about Ellen, about the life that was secreted inside of her, about the broken remains of your heart that still remains pledged to her. 

Eventually, you discover that the Shroud is able to fabricate a body for Juno, that she desires it to give her life. Juno continues to refuse to tell you anything of consequence; she only tells you that which the Assassins already know. Juno continues to bargain, to insult, to do anything she thinks will give her more access. She just wants to be free. You cannot allow it; you don’t know what she would do to Ellen if given the chance.

Then, it is no longer your choice.

The facility is empty but for you. You’re rattling around the kitchen, lost in thought, when there’s a crash, and a bang, and the cacophony becomes endless. There is someone breaking into. Would it really be so bad if you allowed them to take Juno? To relinquish the responsibility to someone else; to allow the other side to murder the last remainder of a forgotten civilisation. You have already decided she’s too dangerous to live. The Assassins would never let her live; she has the same ideals as the the Order, the same desire to do any with the chaos of individuality. She distrusts the nature of humanity as much as you do. 

You duck behind a kitchen counter. No one would blame you for not fighting them - you are the only one here, and certainly the only one with the right skill set to face an unknown amount of assassins. You think of your assassin bracers, stored in your room. It would be a short run to get them, and then a longer journey down two floors to Juno’s holding room. The terrain is familiar to you and they don’t know you’re there, two weighty advantages in your favour. 

And if, in the scuffle, Juno was to die? It wouldn’t be the worst thing to happen.

When all’s said and done, you have killed 6 assassins by the skin of your teeth. They were better trained than you had been expecting, perhaps better than both you and your ancestor. They put a noble fight. Juno is dead, or perhaps the closest she can be to it; her electronic shell lies in pieces, the cords cut. You don’t want to think 4 too long on how possible it actually is for a being such as that to die.

Ellen is waiting at the hospital for you. You don’t have any bad injuries, just a few scrapes that may need stitches. 

“I lost her.”

“I know. I felt it.”

She looks at you. You look back.

“It’s not over.” she says.

“I know.”

 

Ellen gives you another cushy placement researching ancestry. It is both what you love and what you hate; you’d devoted your life to your the sprawling landscape of genetics, of the things hidden within a family's genetic code, but to have seen so much now, to know of another civilisation - nothing you study will ever again be so important, so fascinating, so dangerous. 

You can feel your ancestor and the skills you have gained slipping from you. It is tempting to requisition an Animus, to take one last plunge into your memories, both for the thrill of it and to refresh your skills. Instead, you train more and fight harder when you do. It only takes a week of training alone to realise that you need more of a challenge than this, that you need real opponents instead of dummies. At some point you became an adrenaline junkie, a woman who lived for the fight. 

It takes a month for you to grow bored enough to ask Ellen for a new position. 

“Your Excellency.” You have come to headquarters for this meeting, to beg for new opportunities. Hopefully, you will be more compelling one on one.

“Sophia.”

Her office is dark and lit by only a few warm lamps. Books line two of the four walls; the last two are dominated by a large fireplace and a bay window also as big as the wall. The curtains are drawn; they are ornate and old fashioned, dark in theme. A desk sits in front of them, papers strewn over it in a surprisingly disordered fashion. Ellen rises from behind it to shake your hand and to gesture you to the armchairs in front of the unlit fireplace. These chairs are dark gold in colour and surprising comfortable. The entire room oozes the warm wealth you have come to associate with the Templars, especially with the higher ranking of the Order. The commercial side, Abstergo and it’s affiliates, are cold and remote, technologically advanced and obviously moneyed - they contrast with their Templar beneficiaries almost directly. The Templars are old money; Abstergo is new. 

“So, what can I do for you?” Ellen is perfectly polite. The hint of something wild behind her eyes is gone - her gaze is once again steady and calm, the bags under her eyes the usual for a busy woman instead of the black eye blue of someone having nightmares every night.

“How are you?” You hadn’t meant to ask. You had meant to keep this meeting strictly business, purely professional, but there’s something about the fragility of her, of her hands and her shoulders, that makes your heart squeeze with a love you’ve been trying to forget.

“I’m fine. The Assassins have been quiet and we still have the Apple - I’m perhaps having the easiest time I’ve had in years. How is your new placement?”

“Well, that’s what I’m here to speak to you about. You see, it just is not a challenge for me anymore. Also, my physical skills are starting to waste away. I’m wondering if there’s some of more interesting role I could fulfill - my skills are useful, and I think they could be better utilised by the Order elsewhere.”

“I’m not surprised. I wasn’t expecting the new role to keep your attention for overly long. I’d had another idea, but it’s probably not what you’re expecting. I thought you could perhaps work as a sort of secretary slash bodyguard mix.”

“I think I’m a little old to be playing secretary.”

“True. But I trust you with my life, which is a useful trait to have in my colsest associate.”

“So I’d be more of a right hand woman?”

“Yes, exactly. And you could train with me, to help you to keep your skills sharp.”

“You can fight?”

“Yes, of course. All the Templars can. What use is a secret society, especially one that works in direct opposition to the Assassins, if it’s higher level members can’t protect themselves?”

“If I was to say yes, what would that mean?”

“Right now?” She’d smirked, a new smirk; one of battle, of the rush of the fight. Suddenly you wonder how you could ever have thought she didn’t know how to do battle. “I’d ask you to spar me using nothing but the items in this room.”

You’d sputtered. “What? Why? How would that be useful?” Privately, you wondered how long she’d been thinking about this.

“Come. Consider this your interview.” Like some kind of old movie villain, she had gestured for you to come at her with two fingers. 

There was a synchronicity to both your movements that suggested something fated between the the two of you. When she moved, so did you. Your movements echoed and complemented each other, even as you flipped her ornate table so you could use one of the legs as a makeshift weapon. Ellen’s style was surprisingly sparse, with heavy blows and slight movements designed to use your flair against you. Your fancier moves became useless against her savage simplicity. You fall into the usual dichotomy between assassin and Templar; you light on your feet, her heavy and bruising. Blows are traded almost indefinitely. It becomes impossible for either of you to get past the others guard. Instead, you flow together like you have been fighting all your lives in a sweet challenge with a side of an endurance test. 

Inevitably, Ellen’s greater experience wins out over your higher agility. She traps in a savagely simple choke hold and waits patiently for you to tap out.

“So? Did I pass my ‘interview’?” You ask, more than slightly sarcastically.

“I think so, yes. Welcome to the upper echelon.”

 

It developed over many a nightcap. Being in love with Ellen wasn’t hard, even when she didn’t love you back, but now she gives you lingering looks over whiskey late at night. You catch her watching your hands, watching the small twitches of your face as you read, watching the way you slick on lipstick a little too intensely. She seems utterly fascinated by you. It’s a sweet role reversal. You allow moments to hang between you, in the passing of a document, the crush of a crowd, the tap of her fingers on the mat. It’s the sparring between the two of you that becomes a glorious torture. The rhythm of it, the challenge, becomes something you can’t help but look forward to. 

The first time you kiss her, it isn’t while you’re sparring. It’s as if you’ve both agreed that’s almost too cliché. It happens after, many months into your placement as her assistant/lackey/bodyguard. You are stood just behind her right shoulder in a large crowd. Both of you are shorter than most of the people squashed in the meeting room, and both of you are content to let the bottleneck clear itself out; you’ll sedately follow at the back. Her side is pressed against your front; you’re looking up ever so slightly to meet her eyes. You can feel your cheeks start to heat. She flicks a look up your body and then down. Her gaze goes up to your eyes and then down to your lips. You lick your lips reflexively. A thousand almosts clamour in your head, all the times in the past in the past months when you’ve almost kissed her, when she’s almost kissed you. 

The moment is nearly gone by the time you lay a hand on her cheek and kiss her. She kisses you back - it’s only the smallest of moments, but the weight of the unknowing is lifted. You know now that the looks she gave you weren't imagined. You are not alone in your feelings. The future stretches in front of you, in front of the two of you. She looks into your eyes and seems to promise everything and nothing.

It takes two weeks for you to kiss again. After the first kiss, neither of you had said a word about it, even as you’d had to reapply your lipstick. It had just stewed in the air of the office, in the gym, even in the moments you managed to snatch to yourself during those days. The tension had only needed the smallest of sparks to crack. A small, casual moment, a fleeting smile over a map of the world and her lips had been on yours. She had pushed you hard against her desk, had kissed you hard and desperately, as if it was a moment she had been waiting years not months for. 

She had dug her nails into the skin of your back, hands ferreting their way under your shirt - and then she had stepped back and gone back to talking about recent rumoured Assassin locations with nothing but a cleared throat, as if your lipstick wasn’t smeared all over her mouth. You were shocked enough to let her. That time, anyway.

It took another week of silence for you to make an executive decision. You let yourself into her office late that night, when you know she’ll be out. You settle yourself into one of the chairs by the fireplace. You help yourself to her good whiskey and get ready to wait.

20 minutes later she reenters her office. You’re all carefully posed nonchalance as she freezes, as if she’s been caught doing something she shouldn’t have been. “Ellen. We have something to talk about.”

She’d sat, her face showing her displeasure at being caught unawares. “I don’t love you, you know.”

“I know. Do you respect me?”

“Of course.”

“Are you attracted to me?”

“I should think the answer to that obvious.”

“Then we can see where this goes.” You leant over, awkwardly, to press a hard kiss against her lips. 

You knew the spectre of Juno still lingered within Ellen. You knew there was no happy, perfect ending for the two of you. Your love would forever be unrequited - but you could be partners. You and Ellen could fit together perfectly, in all aspects of life. It would be enough; it would be a decent end, with a vastly satisfying middle.


End file.
